Friday 3 June 2011

Breydon Water - 2.6.11







3 award winning photos of my first Broad-Billed Sandpiper!!




For the first weekend of my week off I had my son, so when a potential new bird for me turned up in Norfolk not far from my dads I thought I could kill two birds with one stone (not literally!!) but annoyingly it wasn't to be seen on the day I was going to go up! Luckily another (or possibly the same bird) turned up at the same site a few days later and so I decided to go for it. I left around 9am and arrived just around Noon. I joined around 8 other birders on site only to find out it hadn't been seen since 10am when it went to roost! Luckily i'd timed it (by pure chance) that the tide was just starting to go out and eventually the waders left the roost to start feeding. The heat haze was horrendous so that wasn't helping picking it out but eventually I got on it but just as the first birder got onto it the whole flock flew and landed in the middle of the channel! I decided to drive round to view from the South wall and almost straight away picked it out again. There it was my first BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER in the UK. I called the only other birder over and got him onto it then put it out on the pagers. It fed for a while before flying further West but from there it was showing at its closest so thats where I got the 3 photos above. Also present were 3 1st summer Little Gulls, 5 Avocet, Little Tern, 3 Knot and a singing Cetti's Warbler. On the way home a Hobby flew over the car near Bygrave.

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